Stop by BOOKMANS PHOENIX or BOOKMANS MESA between now and Sunday, September 7th, and enter to win a pair of passes for the big show at the Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix.

Each store will have one pair of passes to give away, so that means two big winners. Winners will be notified on Monday, September 8th.

The cherry on top: Congress is working with "some of Tucson’s best eco-friendly organizations as we use solar power for the stages, biodegradable plateware and well, so much more"

As for music, here's just a few of the acts who will be taking the stage this weekend: Meat Puppets, Howe Gelb, Devil Makes Three, Dusty Rhodes, the Mother Truckers, Powersolo, Tom Walbank, Centro-Matic, and more.

To see a complete schedule of events, visit the official HoCo Festival 2008 page.

Tickets are $5 a day OR you can pick up FREE tickets at any Bookmans location in Tucson. We're giving 'em away until they're gone. Not a bad deal, yeah?

Since we took over Chandler Cinemas in January, we have worked like crazy to bring something new and different to the Valley's movie scene - a truly independent  movie theatre, "run BY movie lovers, FOR movie lovers". And we've succeeded in doing things NO ONE else in the Phoenix-area cinema business has dared (or even bothered) to attempt.

But it hasn't been enough. Right now, we're fighting for our very survival - which is literally week-to-week.

Due to the rising costs of air-conditioning, equipment repair and replacement, and several other factors, we're teetering on the brink of having to close our doors...

Though the "Fun-Raiser" held on August 2nd was a big success, the Cinemas are still in financial straits and will be holding a follow-up fundraiser on Saturday, September 13th.

Bookmans has been sponsoring Midnite Movie Mamacita's Grindhouse Redux series for the past few years and we can attest to the genuine love and commitment the owners of Chandler Cinemas have to providing quality cult fare to movie lovers in the Valley.

If you'd like to help - through volunteering, donating, whatever - visit the Chandler Cinemas MySpace page to see how you can help keep independent cinema alive in the Valley.

PHOENIX/MESA will be celebrating the day in style with movie star bling for customers, and both customers and Bookmans' staff are encouraged to come in dressed as their favorite celebrity or movie character. We'll highlight the best costumes in a red carpet fashion show.

TUCSON stores will have games and free popcorn throughout the day. We'll also be giving away passes to the Loft Cinema. BOOKMANS SPEEDWAY encourages you to come dressed as your favorite movie character to receive a special coupon!

"Be a Movie Star for a Day" Giveaway! Starting August 1st, stop by BOOKMANS PHOENIX or BOOKMANS MESA and enter to win a prize worthy of any celebrity: one winner will receive dinner and a movie, courtesy of Farrelli's, plus a limo ride! The contest runs all month.

In addition to Movie Madness Day on the 23rd, we have a full roster of special film-themed events happening throughout August: see the complete schedule.

If you'd like to vote for BOOKMANS PHOENIX and/or BOOKMANS MESA in this year's poll, simple click the handy "Vote Now" button below and learn how you can chime in. Deadline for votes is Wednesday, September 3rd!

And don't forget to vote for our friends the Midnite Movie Mamacita and Chandler Cinemas!

JONATHAN LOWE: Welcome, Alice. Now, you're no stranger to literary awards. But what influenced you starting out as a writer, and how did you make the transition from writing stories to writing novels?

ALICE BLANCHARD: Some of my early influences were the short stories of Raymond Carver, John Updike and Stephen Crane. These writer's stories were not only beautifully written, but demanded an emotional response. The short story is exceptionally hard to master. It requires an unusual discipline and attention to character, atmosphere and epiphany. My stories tended to be 25 pages or longer, and people often commented that I should write a novel. Eventually that idea took hold. So for me, writing short stories was an incubation process for writing novels.

The image that inspired Darkness Peering came from my childhood. I grew up in New England farm country, where there were all these run-off ponds, and for some reason I had an image of a dead girl lying in a run-off pond. It disturbed me and wouldn't let go. At the same time, I was intrigued by a moral question: what would you do if somebody you loved turned out to have done something very bad? Would you turn them in? Would you believe them incapable of evil? What if you were wrong?

LOWE: The two things that impressed me most about your new novel The Breathtaker was the original yet believable twist on the serial killer sub-genre, and the narrative drive of the story, which never bogs down long enough to lose the reader, but rather offers him or her "breathing" space while pushing the story ahead. First, how did you arrive at this plot vehicle for your characters?

BLANCHARD: The idea came to me very organically. My husband and I were driving cross-country from New England to Los Angeles, and I fell in love with Oklahoma. The sky opened up, the land flattened out, an occasional farmhouse floated by in a sea of wheat. As we were driving through the center of the state, I noticed a dramatic split in the sky - methyl green below, dark green above. Then a hard rain came. We were in flash-flood territory. A stream rose quickly to road level, so we pulled into a gift shop and asked what was happening. The store owner told us there was a Tornado Watch. We left an hour later and drove across the Texas Panhandle under a fading sky, but Oklahoma haunted me for months afterwards. I just knew I had to write about it.

LOWE: Were you influenced by movies like Twister or Hard Rain?

BLANCHARD: The Breathtaker began with a simple idea, actually - the landscape of Oklahoma. The land and the people I met there haunted me. I then got an idea about a family that was being torn apart from the inside out. A husband and wife with a teenage daughter are in the middle of a crisis when the storm comes. I wrote the scene...the scene turned into a chapter, the chapter into many chapters.

LOWE: What kind of research did you do for the story?

BLANCHARD: After I wrote the book, I went back and did the research in order to make sure I was accurate. I was surprised to find out how often I was right about a certain fact, although I had to learn an enormous amount.

LOWE: Why do you think people chase storms?

BLANCHARD: My sense is that most storm-chasers are adrenaline junkies and also very intellectually curious. I think the people who track tornadoes are similar in some ways to detectives who hunt down serial killers. With The Breathtaker, I was struck by the idea that a homicide can rip through a family the way a tornado rips through a town. Both leave devastation in their wake, both leave many victims. There is a desire to know more, to find out why these things happen, to bear witness to such events that are beyond our control.

LOWE: Charlie Grover's past emotionally affects his presence in the story, and points to a suspect. What are your thoughts about him?

BLANCHARD: For Charlie Grover, I had an image of a cop with burn scars over a third of his body. I liked the idea that, because of an old tragedy, a fire, he wore his loss and pain right there on his body. He couldn't hide it from the world the way most of us can. It was there for everyone to see. I like a hero who has it all out there and has to deal with it and can't run away from it. I think the whole trick to writing a novel is finding a character or characters you're obsessed with. If you are obsessed with an idea or character, then something true and meaningful will spring from it.

LOWE: Time Warner Audio did a great job on the audio version, and Dennis Kao told me that they took the time to add sound effects because they enjoyed it so much, and thought it would work well here. Did you think, as I do, that the effects aided the story unobtrusively? And what did you think of Peter Coyote's performance?

BLANCHARD: I think they did an amazing job. I greatly admire Peter Coyote as an actor, and I thought he was just brilliant.

LOWE: This sounds almost like an audio movie, and in ways is better than Twister because it substitutes a mystery/suspense element where there's only an inane rivalry in the movie. Any thoughts on audio books as a medium, in an age when more people find themselves stuck in traffic longer, and in all kinds of weather?

BLANCHARD: I'm from Los Angeles where traffic jams are the norm. I have a lot of friends who are into audio books due to long commutes, and I think it's great. When I was little, my grandfather would quote whole sections of Alice in Wonderland to my sisters and me. He took us up to his creaky old attic and let us pick out these very old, illustrated books to keep. He taught me that books were special, and for me, there's nothing like the smell and feel of a brand new book, and there's nothing like having a book read to you, either. Although I haven't heard many audio books in the past, I intend to listen to more in the future.

LOWE: What's next for you?

BLANCHARD: Regarding my next suspense novel, all I can tell you is that there's a different cast of characters, it's set in a whole new locale, and I'm very excited about it. I love to write about normal, everyday people who are just scraping by, doing their jobs, going about their business, trying to be good mothers or fathers, who unexpectedly encounter an obstacle, something hugely life-threatening or overwhelming, and must be braver or stronger than they ever imagined possible. We all hope we can rise above who we are. Real challenge, big conflict, can bring out our heroic side, and I'm interested in that.

Jonathan Lowe's anti-TV author website is JustSayNoWay.com. His new short novel The Conversation will be published in serial format online at SouthwestBlend.com starting in September, as a free download. It is a fictional version of Eckhart Tolle's bestselling The Power of Now, with permission to quote.

Okay, it only sounds like Motel 666. Actually it's the Deep South satanic fleabag setting for The Beyond (aka Seven Doors to Death), Italian horror maestro Lucio Falci's 1981 gore-galore gag-a-thon. Rarely seen in this country except in a heavily-edited video version, this cult favorite returns to the screen in all its insane 35 mm splendor as the Midnite Movie Mamacita presents a double feature starring kiwi fave David Warbeck, who also stars in the second big co-hit The Sex Thief (1973). The double feature will screen Friday and Saturday nights, August 23rd and 24th, at the Chandler Cinemas.

Taking a break from the heavy horror of The Beyond, Warbeck (who was once considered to follow Roger Moore as James Bond) also appears in The Sex Thief, a swingin' Seventies sex comedy (nudity a go go!) about a ballsy burglar out to snatch all he can. (As any Brit knows, a bird in the hand is worth two in the...well, you get the idea.)

Friday, August 23rd: The Beyond at 9 p.m., The Sex Thief at 11 p.m.

Saturday, August 24th: The Beyond at 5 and 9 p.m., The Sex Thief at 7 and 11 p.m.

Admission is $8. The Chandler Cinemas are located at 2140 N. Arizona Boulevard, Chandler (behind Target), 480-821-1605.

Grindhouse Redux is presented by Bookmans Entertainment Exchange.

Bookmans is proud to be one of this year's major sponsors of Tucson's Birthday Celebration.

From the official Tucson Birthday website: "Tucson's Birthday month is an idea conceived by Los Descendientes del Presidio de Tucson and loosley organized by an all-volunteer organization dedicated to celebrating Tucson's history, arts, culture, and more."

So if you missed out on the good times the first go 'round, be sure to swing by Hotel Congress for the 2008 HoCo Record Festival 2 on Saturday, August 30th. Starting at 9 a.m. and wrapping up at 3 p.m., it's the perfect antitidote for summer-exhausted souls and hardcore music lovers. We're co-sponsoring with Zia Record Exchange again and that means gift certificates and other goodies throughout the day for lucky attendees.

BOOKMANS GRANT's Mario and Cody will once again be manning the Bookmans table, so swing by, say hi, pick up a record or two or five.

Did we mention admission is FREE?

Here's the press release, courtesy of Hotel Congress:

2008 HoCo Record Festival 

When: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday Aug. 30 

Where: Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. 

Price: admission is FREE 

More info (for the public): 622-8848, www.hotelcongress.com/club 

Our inaugural record festival in January was such a success, it’s time for round two. This time, we’re completely filling the lobby and club with tables stocked with records. 

Sponsored by the historic Hotel Congress, Zia Record Exchange and Bookmans Entertainment Exchange, we again cull from the best the Southwest has to offer. Vinyl enthusiasts will find: 

• Local and regional vendors, including record stores (Tucson’s Toxic Ranch, Twist and Shout, Zia Record Exchange and PDQ Records and Tempe’s Stinkweed’s), KXCI, Bookmans and independent dealers selling rare, new and used vinyl. 
• Genres from the usual suspects of rock ’n’ roll, jazz, R&B, soul, blues and other treasures 
  
• The Stereo Hospital, with stereo equipment, including refurbished turntables at reasonable prices 
  
• Music-related photography by local Mark Martinez 
  
• Independent vendor from El Paso with more than 800 music-related posters 
  
• Giveaways of gift cards from Zia and Bookmans throughout  
  
• Memorabilia and merchandise  
  
• And guest DJs all day